Notes from the talks

This page contains notes of some of the talks I was listening to. They were written for my own use and not originally intended for publishing (not even trying to be comprehensive, be warned), but I decided to put them here as there isn't a lot of material currently available. Contact the original authors for more information, and Sebastian Blondeel if you have more notes or something else that could be put at the organizers' site.

Robert Strandh: Common LISP and CLIM

• at the moment CMU CL the only good, fast and free Common Lisp compiler available, but hard to install
• Newman's SBCL (Steel Bank Common Lisp) easier, high hopes
• Common Lisp features:
  • garbage collection
  • first-class functions
  • keyword arguments
  • macros!
  • object oriented (multiple dispatch, multiple inheritance)
  • possible to modify classes in the fly (add fields etc)
  • meta-object protocol (possibility to change the way language itself works)
• problem: CMU CL and SBCL neither fully thread-safe

• library of classes and fuctions to create user interfaces
• commercial implementations have it
• specification is public (30 chapters, over 400 pages)

• several people implemented independently different parts of the functionality (Gilbert Baumann, Mike McDonald), now merging
• widgets being worked on this summer
• usable subset will be available around October, full implementation after 1 year?
• free software community can possibly influence future specifications
• development opens new views to CLOS, Common Lisp Object System

Neil Walfield and Richard Stallman: GNU/Hurd

• moves Unix functionality to user space => user can change almost anything without permission of the superuser (mount filesystems etc)
• abstraction, any piece can be replaced
• at the moment somewhere around Linux 1.1
• multi-server microkernel
• only a handful of serious developers, more needed
• security: authentication server, much like traditional unix security
• no multiprocessor yet, but shouldn't be too difficult to add?

• Picture of the architecture
• authorizations connected to ports in the authorization server
• for instance auth. of one user, one group etc, can choose which of the available ones to use
• modify authorization capabilities on the fly (add more rights to uid => affects all processes of the user)
• authentication "tokens" cannot be reused in the sense that if you are authenticated to open a file the file server cannot do other things using your capabilities
• ideas of nice features:
  • filesystem that would always call cvs and have multiple versions of each file
  • directory that contains the union of contents of several directories

Hans Reiser: Discussion: free software and business models

• a participant can use all the software in the pool
• solves the problem that some people use a certain program rarely, some every day
• critical mass problem => goverment funding in the beginning?
• funding according to user evaluations, up to the users to evaluate who contributed how much
• if you put your enhancements to the software in the pool you get money for it, if not you can keep your changes but don't get money
• Hans mentioned that Stallman doesn't like the pool because you have to be in it to use the software, and would rather prefer hardware tax

• currently makes money by making customizations (Alpha port for instance)
• customizations are GPL:d
• revenues doubling every 3 months, not much yet though
• could turn to consulting business
• still not sure if this model will work or not

• software available under GPL, but obtainable under another license if paid for it (big companies as customers, idea to accept contributions in money rather than code)
• CD-ROM vendor can sponsor to a certain extent to make Linux more successful
• sponsor messages model: name mentioned

Richard Stallman: Copyright vs. community in the age of computer networks

Summaries of the topics

These were presented on Saturday. Probably much more accurate info is available directly from the leaders of each topic.

Very high level languages

• Complete summary provided by Robert Strandh.

(Security people were away at the moment)

Uniformization of distributions

• main goal: standardize application binary interface
• file system standards would help development and uniform documentation
• discussion: boot scripts
• standardization of desktop menus, wm settings (project in progress)

Linux kernel (presented by Andrea Arcangeli)

• discussion about memory management, LRU algorithms: two approaches, one from BSD, one from scratch, turned out to be almost similar => will do testing, code sharing
• interesting to see people face to face
• realtime requirements and multimedia: synchronizing development, some changes will go to Linux 2.4
• perhaps a solution to dedicate a machine for multimedia applications at the expense of the performance of other apps

Databases

• two topics: MySQL and Tangram
• MySQL efficient, fast, easy to use, many companies use internally
• MySQL licence changed to GPL
• Tangram: for saving Perl objects in relational databases, including multiple inheritance and other such complexities
• information about future projects, didn't write down

Computer music

• many ongoing projects, now several institutions opening their projects
• a lot of early research made on Unix systems before switching to Win/Mac - possibility to use something from that
• discussion about realtime needs with Linux kernel people
• plugin architecture discussion
• all agree: Linux will become an important platform

Libre software for the blind and visually impaired

• long term goal: contribute standards so that the needs of visually impaired are fulfilled in the normal program development: 5-7 years?
• developers don't know much about the needs of visually impaired people
• hope: no need for the topic in the future: a natural part of others
• two main parts: one part is to talk to developers and do advocacy, second part is to develop software
• standard interfaces for speech
• at the moment only useful solution emacs + emacsspeech package: serves its purpose well but many things could be improved
• new problem, getting bigger: GUIs, graphical apps harder to make accessible
• most important problems: lack of people, lack of money
• belief that a solution can be found to both
• in this meeting: presentation and a workshop
• only one man present came to hear the presentation
• special room very useful, people could come there to talk
• hope that being present in the meeting helped the project

Libre software for education

• planned two half days, became three days, two places
• about 150-200 people in the public conferences
• 3 types of activities: public presentations, practical workshops, discussions
• defining vocabulary
• aim to present what exists and what is lacking
• document format problems, suggesting XML/EduML
• French ministry of education had made a promising talk
• inter-ministry council next Monday about the topic
• PingOO, distribution specially designed for schools, both primary and higher levels
• use of free software for local administrations, financial reasons in schools
• availability of documents important
• reports about experiences in other countries: Mexico, Quebec
• demo: old machines put to use (running Linux, X-terminals), shown to audience: people very excited of the speed, had to open machines to show what's inside
• has been a big need for this kind of demos
• LDP (french part: call for contributors)
• project: teaching of mathematics
• several workshops, including some not planned beforehand because of strong demand
• full day presentation of software to run a library, agreed on doc. formats and other standards now, next year hopefully a complete program
• library program now located at SourceForge
• Thursday: round table, call for volunteers for Aquitaine region
• many outside Aquitaine showd up, negotiations of demo organizing, cooperation
• strong need for information and training of teachers
• next year we'll hear about actions taken
• The topic page and especially the detailed program section contain a lot of information about the activities, but mostly in French (the presentations were in French in this topic)

Libre software and development

• one person in all the themes that made synthesis of it, this is the synthesis of them all
• very interesting discussions
• Recommendations:
  • proposing free software for government, public organizations, health care, education
  • grouping telecom people, administration and users
  • several workshops planned
  • mobilisation of energy towards public access points to network
  • training, hardware, also old versions on old computers
  • support research for free software to lower poverty
• creation of an African association of users of free software became reality here
  • hope: will be a major player to promote free software in Africa
  • setting up a collaboration framework
  • propagate laws discussed in France that favor free software in administration and governmental use
  • insertion of programmers from south to north
  • cooperation between LUGs in Africa and LUGs elsewhere
  • starting pilot projects
  • informing big companies about use of free software in Southern countries
  • law: protection of the rights to use freely free software
• launch actions in regional organizations: African IPO (?), economic commission for Africa, other interregional organizations
• thanks to ABUL

Libre software for corporate business

• focus: use of free software in local enterprises - didn't attract many participants

Libre software for medicine

• software rather specialized
• this far software been used only in admin etc. tasks, not medical decisions, but going to be used there too
• touches everybody (everyone in a hospital sometimes, human life can depend on the software)
• appearance of evidence-based medicine: hard facts => set of rules implemented in software => decision
• secret rules would be a catastrophy
• team review of source code necessary, but has been difficult
• battle against secrets and share info
• bureaucrats have no clue about needs
• at LSM: several projects together, common goals, more co-operation

Law and libre software

• four talks Friday
• GPL from the French law point of view
• problems about license duration because licence applies to all versions of the software => RMS argued against => further discussions
• preambles useful for interpretations, otherwise easy to make very different interpretations
• which law/court/country should be used, GPL does not state which court
• RMS about copyrights
• Open law: lawyers and students (?) getting together, http://www.openlaw.org (still in early stages)
• patents talk (or discussion?)
  • groups of interest getting profit => goal to make IPO rights stronger
  • general interest, freedom of speech and access to information suffering
  • official motivation of IPO to advance humanity
  • presently observing increase in immaterial field, patentability of software techniques a problem
  • endangering innovation in small companies because defence difficult, endangering creation of free software
  • free software vulnerable
  • proposition to African people to think about the topic to prevent jeopardizing innovation in Africa
  • 16000 signatures at http://petition.eurolinux.org, see also http://www.freepatents.org
  • opinion: when law comes illegal, resistance is a must for every citizen

New (off)topic: LUG co-operation

• presented by Raphaello Calvelli
• wanted to take advantage of the special occasion of this kind of international conference
• African co-operation one example
• sees that free sofware promoting together would have much stronger effect (comparison: Greenpeace)
• next year will be a bigger and better organized topic

First Debian conference

• (language jokes about Thierry learning English)
• first day speech from the throne (Akkerman)
• Debian is a distribution built by only volontary work
• high level packaging system being designed, could unify distributions (talking with at least Mandrake people)
• number of maintainers and packages increasing, 1600 developers and 40000 packages in five years at current speed
• aiming to make organizational structures better, to improve web pages, to get more people to write documentation
• Debian quality assurance team
• Hurd summary
• Debian can be seen as a meta-distribution, possibility to take a subset
• example: PingOO for educational purposes, designed for an environment with several OS:s
• Lameter/SiteRock: telemetry box built on Debian to maintain and monitor networks
• credit-card sized Debian
• package pools try to address problems of delay between releases
• new distribution line: test
  • for packages that are stable enough to go out of unstable
  • customized distributions easier
  • archive will contain several versions, make mirroring easier
• a lot of discussion outside official topics

Announcements

• call to gather notes
• call to fight against software patents in Europe (software companies doing lobbying, should meet local EU parliament member etc)
• First Debian conference next year 4-8.7.2001 at the same place, after that should be held in different countries

Closing

• Pierre Jarillon / president of Abul
• Gilles Savary / member of EU parliament
• place: university, place to share information
• Savary spoke about patents, see the full transcript.
• next year 4-8 July 2001